The Liechtenstein national football team is the
national football team of Liechtenstein and is controlled by the Liechtenstein Football
Association. The organisation is known as the
Liechtensteiner Fussballverband in German. The
team's first match was an unofficial match against Malta in Seoul, a 1-1 draw in 1981. Their first official
match came two years later, a 0-1 defeat from Switzerland.
Liechtenstein's largest win, a 4-0 win over Luxembourg in a 2006 World Cup qualifier on 13 October
2004, was both its first away win ever and its first win in any World Cup qualifier. Liechtenstein suffered
its biggest ever loss in 1996, during qualification for the 1998 FIFA
World Cup, with an 11-1 thrashing at the hands of the Republic of Macedonia.

The team's record in competitive games was so poor it prompted
British writer Charlie Connelly to follow the entire
qualifying
campaign for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. As recorded in
the subsequent book Stamping Grounds: Liechtenstein's Quest for
the World Cup, Liechtenstein lost all eight games without
scoring a goal.

Four days before Liechtenstein scored its first win in World Cup
qualifying, the team made even more headlines with a stunning 2-2
draw in Vaduz in a 2006 World Cup qualifier against Portugal. Before this
result, Liechtenstein had lost all of its previous 20 World Cup
qualifiers. They also caused a shock in the return match at the end
of the group phase when Benjamin Fischer scored,
and Liechtenstein led at half time, before eventually losing
2-1.

Liechtenstein is the only country ever to lose to San Marino, with a
0-1 loss in a friendly match on 28 April 2004.

History

Liechtenstein are only a relatively recent affiliate to FIFA,
and did not participate in any qualifying series until the UEFA Euro 1996
qualifiers. There they managed to surprise the Republic of
Ireland by holding them to a 0-0 draw on 3 June 1995. On 14
October 1998, they managed their first victory in a qualifying
campaign by winning 2-1 against Azerbaijan in a UEFA Euro 2000
qualifying match.

Since then, the presence of Liechtenstein clubs in the Swiss
league system and of a handful of professional players (most
notably Mario
Frick) has seen the side's competitiveness improve enormously.
The Euro 2004 qualifiers saw
Liechtenstein improve to the extent they restricted England to 2-0 wins. The
2006 World Cup
qualifiers, however, brought even better results as two wins
over Luxembourg and draws
against both Slovakia and Portugal meant that
Liechtenstein finished with 8 points.

In the Euro 2008 qualifiers, Liechtenstein beat Latvia for probably their
greatest ever victory — indeed their first against a country that
has qualified for a major finals — through a solitary goal from
Mario Frick. The result caused the Latvian manager to resign after
the match. They repeated their heroics against Iceland managing to beat
them 3-0 on 17 October 2007 for their second qualifying group
win.

The Liechtensteiner Fussballverbund voted Rainer Hasler to be
their "Golden Player" — their best player over the last 50 years —
to mark UEFA's golden jubilee.